search function with hint

[xbl1]

Hi;I'd like to ask you that how i can create a search function with hint when the user misspelling some word.For example:i type a string like the "ful text serch mysql" in google, and it will ask me"Did you mean: full text search mysql?"what king of knowledge can help me to do that? Thanks

[jhecht]

i believe it deals with levenshtein(sp?) calculations. http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.levenshtein.php is the place to look at. I'm guess you'll need a word DB and etc etc.. If anyone else knows a different way to do so then go for it, but i believe this is how google does it.

[Synook]

I used to know that as "Edit distance"... but I suppose Levenshtein sounds more complex :)Edit: I found an XML dictionary which you can reference when performing spell-checks: http://www.ibiblio.org/webster/

[xbl1]

i believe it deals with levenshtein(sp?) calculations. http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.levenshtein.php is the place to look at. I'm guess you'll need a word DB and etc etc.. If anyone else knows a different way to do so then go for it, but i believe this is how google does it.

Thanks a lot, but this method has a disadvantage that i need to store all the words into the array first. I think it may be has a defined function which has stored most of the words for us, like a dictionary.

[jhecht]

thats why you would use a database to hold and index words that are searched. you would then use php and mysql to put those values into the array and calculate levenshtein's

[xbl1]

thats why you would use a database to hold and index words that are searched. you would then use php and mysql to put those values into the array and calculate levenshtein's

i known what you mean now, thanks

[justsomeguy]

Many databases have functions for computing the Levenshtein or Soundex distances between two strings. If the dictionary is stored in a database then a query will return matches within a certain threshold.